The SA Friends of the Beit Halochem Zahal Disabled Veterans Organisation was established in Johannesburg in 1982, its primary goal being to help and support Zahal disabled veterans by raising funds to help them return and resume their normal lives as soon as possible.

Generous Killarney Mall shoppers and retail sponsors have managed to collect one-years-worth of stationery for Thembelenkosini Care Givers in Soweto, part of an ongoing initiative to support the centre.

There’s a popular weekly satirical show in Israel called Eretz Nehederet. In a recent episode, an actor playing Benny Gantz, the former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and newcomer to Israeli politics, is asked how he’s feeling.

Devotion to the cause of the State of Israel flourishes in the most unlikely places, even in societies where the Jewish presence is small to non-existent. Such is the case in Mozambique, where the work of Beth-El Associacao Crista Amigos De Israel - Mozambican Christian Friends of Israel - testifies to how much can be achieved by those inspired by their Christian faith to promote the Israeli cause, despite adverse conditions.

JNF’s unique “Blue Boy Box” now lives at King David Linksfield Pre-Primary so that children of each generation learn the importance of tzedakah (charity or welfare). It is the responsibility of Jews all over the world to build Israel, develop it and nurture it as the home of the Jewish nation

“Knowledge is Light” was our school motto when I was a child in Durban. The importance of education was made clear to us from as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t taken for granted. A good education was a privilege.

How to fight terrorism while at the same time not encourage it is a challenge Israel continues to grapple with. Last Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that he was enacting the so-called “terrorist salaries law” for the first time. It allows Jerusalem to deduct from the monthly taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA) those monies it claims go towards terrorism.

(JTA) After the New England Patriots beat the favoured Kansas City Chiefs to reach their third straight Super Bowl – their amazing ninth in less than 20 years – CBS sports analyst Boomer Esiason made an intriguing statement, namely that Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

I can’t bear bullies! I know I am not alone in having a serious aversion to anyone or any group who tries to make themselves feel better by making others feel bad about themselves. I can’t stand people who push others around just because they are not able – for whatever reason – to stand up to them.

We have all heard the term before, and either flinched, cringed, or nodded our heads. The words “apartheid Israel” have become a term so often used in the discourse around Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we have somewhat lost our ability to think critically about its use.

With Prince William’s historic visit to Israel this week, all eyes have been trained on the Jewish capital. It may have taken 70 years, but the first official visit by a member of the British Royal family began in Israel on Monday, when William, the Duke of Cambridge, arrived in Tel Aviv.

Some 5 600 emissaries (shluchim) from Chabad-Lubavitch from all over the world gathered at the Pier 8 warehouse in Brooklyn, New York this week for the opening of their four-day annual international conference and banquet, 75 years after the arrival of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from Europe.

It boggles the mind. Why is so much Torah-coverage given to the subject of an elaborate tent-structure called the tabernacle? The verses that relate to the tabernacle’s construction seem to go on and on. They fill not one, but four weekly portions.

“The greatness of our nation is that our people are great. We are a nation of heroes, of people with good and decent moral fibre who will not tolerate our country being plundered!” So said Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein in Pretoria this morning.“This is a struggle for accountability and justice,” Goldstein told the crowd (which included prominent Jewish CEOs like Adrian Gore, Stephen Koseff and Michael Katz). “This struggle is about sovereignty. The power of the people always triumphs in the end.”

Reflections and soul searching on the ‘Night of Broken Glass’

At the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg last Wednesday evening, reflecting on “Kristallnacht” or “Night of Broken Glass”, the German Ambassador to South Africa, Walter Lindner, asked the question: “Why did this happen in our country (Germany) with an impressive cultural background?

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MARGOT COHEN | Nov 16, 2016

“A thriving Jewish community became isolated, were beaten up, their businesses destroyed, schools, hospitals and cemeteries vandalised and more than 30 000 were sent to Dachau, Buchenwald and other concentration camps where hundreds died within weeks of arrival. It was the beginning of the Holocaust.”

On November 9 to 10, 1938, in an incident known as “Kristallnacht”, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalised Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews.

In the aftermath of Kristallnacht some 30 000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.

However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse. During the Second World War, Hitler and the Nazis implemented their so-called “Final Solution” to what they referred to as the “Jewish problem”, and carried out the systematic murder of some six million European Jews in what came to be known as the “Holocaust”.

Lindner said the focus of the German Republic was to take responsibility for the events which followed, face the past, never forget and to ensure that it never happened again.

“Showing solidarity with Israel and speaking up for injustice throughout the world is our moral obligation and a sign of hope,” said Lindner.

Special guest speaker, Prof Michael Berenbaum, professor of Jewish studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, was warmly welcomed by Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre Director Tali Nates.

Prof Berenbaum is the author of 20 books and hundreds of articles. He was project director overseeing the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and later served as president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which took testimony of 52 000 Holocaust survivors in 32 languages and 57 countries. His work in film has won Emmy and Academy Awards.

Reflecting on the anti-Jewish violence that took place in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland on the fateful “Night of Broken Glass”, Nates said following the 1938 November progroms, life in the Reich, had become no longer possible for Jews. Most tried to leave, “but there was no place to go”.

The German anti-Jewish policy, known as “the Final Solution” with the pogroms, “are considered the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning”.

Berenbaum said “the third generation Germans are asking embarrassing questions of the second generation who were scared to challenge their parents’ involvement with the Nazis”. He believed that it takes decades to confront the past, “but it must be done, as the weight of mankind is upon us”.

He said the German Jewish community is expanding rapidly, with Jews from the Soviet Union entering the German republic.